Thatcher Needed Mine Victory

Breaking Of Strike Beards The British Labor Lion

LONDON — The end to Britain`s coal strike has come none too soon for a government that has been losing public support and has even dropped behind the opposition Labor Party in the latest opinion poll.

Government ministers are being careful not to crow about their victory, because the strike has left deep scars in British society, and the officials recognize that a time of healing is now needed.

But the defeat of the strike is a landmark achievement for the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in its campaign to reduce the inordinate power of unions in Britain. Since coming to office in 1979, the government has pursued this goal through legislative restrictions that, incidentally, were not used against the miners for tactical reasons.

But most of all the power of unions has been curbed by the rise of unemployment to 13 percent of the work force. This has reduced the membership, and finances, of many unions and has made union members reluctant to risk their jobs by striking. Indeed, the miners were defeated most of all because other unions refused to join in sympathy strikes.

The miners brought down the government of Prime Minister Edward Heath in 1974. Their failure to do the same to the Thatcher government--an explicit aim of miners union leader Arthur Scargill--makes it unlikely any other union will try.

Union power, which in the past has brought such abuses as featherbedding and unrealistic wage demands, has been a factor in Britain`s economic decline, but it has not been, as many union-bashers like to think, the source of all of Britain`s ills.

Many economists believe unions acquired their excessive power through the failure of British management to manage properly; in good times, the managers gave away more than could be afforded in the long term.

On this issue, the country has largely been behind Thatcher. Polls have shown that even many union members were uneasy with the power of the unions. The results of the last two national elections, in which many union members voted for Thatcher, have borne out the polls.

But on other issues Thatcherism has begun to lose some of its earlier appeal, at least temporarily. The government`s failure to reduce unemployment; its cuts in spending on many public programs, including its attempts to nibble away at welfare-state benefits; and its failure to shore up a faltering pound have had their effect.

Treasury officials estimated the cost of the coal strike at $1.6 billion, but outside economists have put it as high as $3.7 billion.

This is also the most confrontational government in recent British history, and many voters have become worried by the growing divisions between social classes and between a rich southern England and a decaying north.

Many believe these divisions have been exacerbated by Thatcher`s policies and style of leadership.

Even her recent triumphal visit to Washington probably did not help her at home. She has been widely accused of pandering to the Reagan administration and of turning Britain into a satellite of the United States, instead of frankly speaking out on issues of concern to Britain: the huge U.S. deficit for one and President Reagan`s ``Star Wars`` initiative for another.

A poll published Saturday put Labor two percentage points ahead of Thatcher`s Conservatives. Few people here imagine that if an election were held today, Thatcher would be defeated by a Labor Party that is deeply divided, poorly led and committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament.

But there is evident a disenchantment with Thatcherism. The end of the miners strike should help shore up the pound and restore the government`s political authority. Whether Thatcher can go on to achieve her ultimate goal of giving Britain the kind of enterprise culture that exists in the United States is more problematic.

This is a rather easygoing society, one in which neither the work ethic nor the accumulation of wealth is highly regarded, as political columnist Alan Watkins pointed out in the Observer Sunday.

``Mrs. Thatcher is disappointed in us now,`` he wrote. ``Yet the truth is that we do not want either to work very hard or to become very rich.``